South Huainan

You might have heard of China’s “ghost cities” – huge areas of urban development completely devoid of people. South of my little city, Huainan (淮南), in Anhui Province, the government has built a new city – called South Huainan (山南)- which is more or less devoid of people, aside from one small park. It is a bizarre place of new apartment blocks standing empty and already crumbling, homes for tens of thousands of people falling apart before anyone has even moved in, brand new infrastructure unused and yet somehow already deteriorating, and little old villages not yet bulldozed as construction stalls.

Two mayors have gone to prison for the corruption involved in getting this bizarre city built. Despite having no sports teams, nor any tourism industry, they saw fit to build a giant stadium (Huainan Olympic Stadium, 淮南奥林匹克体育场;), which looks like it will be finished soon, and an “Olympic Park” nearby. There is a famous house made to look like a piano, as architects were given free reign prior to Xi Jinping’s crackdown on innovative building design. They also attempted to build a $4 billion RMB theme park called Happy World, featuring the tallest ferris wheel in Asia, but shortly before completion the man in charge of the theme park fled the country, taking all the remaining cash with him and dooming the project to failure. The theme park now lies empty, rusting away, although you can see the ferris wheel for miles around.